Digital BW, The Print

I have just instoled and tested the QTR 2.4.1 and the tone and everything looks very good 
except that the pictures are much more grainy than my epson driver? I have tested it on my 
R800, has it something to do with that printer or am I missing something? I use the 2880 and 
the 1440 setting and it looks too grainy to be used on smaller pictures at least. Am I doing 
something wrong or is the driver just more grainy?

Joakim

It's grainy if you are printing on matte. I worked around this problem
by creating a QTR profile which uses PK as light gray. Still a bit
grainy but usable. To really beat the graininess on this printer you
may want to replace the GLOP with an LK.

--nick 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "joaskild"
<joaskild@...> wrote:

>
> I have just instoled and tested the QTR 2.4.1 and the tone
> and everything looks very good except that the pictures
> are much more grainy than my epson driver? I have tested
> it on my R800, has it something to do with that printer or
> am I missing something? I use the 2880 and the 1440
> setting and it looks too grainy to be used on smaller
> pictures at least. Am I doing something wrong or is the
> driver just more grainy?
> 
> Joakim

Nick,

Thanks for your adwaice. I was using epson premiar glossy paper. It it mainly a problem with 
this printer model or will it also be like this on say epson 7800?

Joakim

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "joaskild"
<joaskild@...> wrote:
>
> Nick,
> 
> Thanks for your adwaice. I was using epson premiar glossy paper. It
it mainly a problem with 
> this printer model or will it also be like this on say epson 7800?

It's a problem with the R800. That printer normally uses one kind of
black, matte black, when making prints on matte paper. So light shades
of gray are made up of widely spread dots of this very dark black, and
look grainy.

What Nick did was make QTR use the "other" black in the printer, photo
black, which is normally intended only for use on glossy paper, in the
lighter areas of the print. Because photo black isn't as deep a black
as matte black, the printer needs more dots of photo black to get the
same shade of gray. More dots means less visible grain.

UC3 printers like the 7800 actually uses three different shades of
black, full strength (either matte or photo black), light black, and
light light black. The end result is that the lightest tones get
printed using lots of dots of light light black, the mid tones get
lots of dots of light black, and the darker tones get lots of dots of
photo or matte black. Lots of dots means pretty much invisible grain. 

Light black and light light black are both lighter than photo black,
so the 7800, 2400, etc. look even better than using the "Nick trick"
on the R800.